Top Rated Top Hat Alternatives
I love how as a new user, it's so easy to navigate. I downloaded it, and have been using it for over 2 years to gain student understanding of topics and test their knowledge through quizzes. Its also one of my favorite platforms for peer reviews, as it then integrates with Canvas and helps me grade students accordingly. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I think the only thing of concern for me rather than dislike is that it's slightly costly, especially in comparison to competition like clicker. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
22 out of 23 Total Reviews for Top Hat
- Very easy to sign up using the code for a particular class/workshop/lecture
- Basic allows for free use with vast features to allow for student participation
- Top hat allows participants to track the quality of their work, and how it gets better or worse with every class- making students more responsible Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
- Nothing for now really, the website as well as mobile app work seamlessly well.
- The only thing I would say is that at times, refreshing is slow and so it takes time for the screen to catch up with live information Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Top Hat is a great student engagement tool, useful in polling students on the fly or setting up assessments prior to class. The built-in LMS could be useful for tracking student progress, but the free version allows for excellent engagement with a large number of students. Some other polling platforms cap the number of students in the free version, making it difficult to use with large class sizes. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The LMS might be useful for institutions without their own institution-wide LMS; however, the reliance on the Top Hat LMS to use some of the advanced features makes the whole system somewhat obtrusive and tedious. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The gradebook is great. It is easy to assign questions to students who may miss class. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
There is a bug when creating questions that involve mathematics. The error message says, "Answers cannot contain commas". I have pointed out this bug to them, but the response is "fixing this error is not a priority". This product is not useful for anyone teaching a course with a lot of mathematics. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
As a student, I found it helpful that you could return at a later time and access course materials like PowerPoints, Review questions and videos. All the information was in one one location. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Like any software there were glitches and we had to resort back to the old fashion PowerPoint. And then it took 10 minutes for rhe videos to load online. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
It’s pretty much always up. We’ve only had one downtime, scheduled or unscheduled. Mostly self-supporting, but if not, tech Support is accessible. Web accessibility seems like a priority and developers are responsive. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
Always changing/developing/updating, which is good, but not very helpful to me as a member of the support team for our institution. Makes it difficult to keep up with training/self-help materials and tracking known issues/bugs. For Top Hat itself to keep up, too, since their published documentation is sometimes behind. Also, TH hasn’t been great about publishing organized and standardized release notes, though they started out with no notes published at all, so they’ve made progress. It’s like the original staff/management didn’t realize that clients would want that information available to them; but they’re catching on. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The mobile phone option makes it easy to stay engaged while using your laptop for lecture and other parts of the class, especially in a remote setting. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I think there could be some improvements on allowable graphics. Sometimes it was hard to read a chart that you needed to answer a quick question on. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I like a lot of features of Tophat! The slideshow sharing, and the ability for students to join the course with an access code makes it very easy for them to access the course. All the slideshows can be saved in Assigned material. Grading is very easy through Tophat, and I really like the geo-location feature in marking the attendance. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
There is a lot of lag sometimes while trying to access the time constrained attendance marker. I have also had issues with its layout for the web version - that's not very user friendly. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The layout of Top Hat is very straightforward, and really works well in large lecture settings in order to further engage the class and check in with everyone so that they're all on the same page. It's also very simple, which is perfect for making sure students can answer questions quickly within a lecture. In addition, it's a very effective tool for checking attendance when the class or room is too large to fully monitor. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I feel like the mobile site / app integration could be more smooth, and it was frustrating having to log in through the institutional log-in every time rather than being able to log in and stay logged in to the Top Hat site (although that might've been more due to my institution's policies than Top Hat itself) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
High ease of use for both student and teachers. App integration to classroom activities was seamless. Even the most old-fashioned (technology-aversive) professor in our department is using it. If the student cannot get to the app for some reason, there's also an option to text their response to a 24/7 mobile bot [this is a much under-appreciated feature]. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
The only thing I dislike is the overall reliance this app has on a phone. What if a student does not have a mobile device? Arguably, that's uncommon these days. Nevertheless, this reliance excludes some young/pre-college kids as well as low-income students. Another case was shown firsthand when we had a student come tell us his phone's battery died in class. Thus, he couldn't sign in on TopHat for the day and, with the burden of proof on us, we excused him. Naturally, this leads a slippery-slope for any students seeking dishonest excusals in the future. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I LOVE the fact that you can customize and more affordable and interactive textbook for the classes you are taking. We all know that textbook prices aren't cheap and can definitely add up so it's really awesome that Top Hat offers the ability to actually afford a textbook that you can CUSTOMIZE to your needs,. Also from what I've heard from one of my professors is that it is easy to create Homework assignments through Top Hat as well. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
I dislike that fact that I don't use it as often because I am no longer a teachers aid at my school, I did not use it often but when I did utilize Top Hat it didn't give me much to dislike. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.
